Teaching is pretty cool.
I occasionally teach cartooning classes, and they go about like the cartoon above. Nobody wants to hear that they’re starting at the basics, but they’re usually startled by what the basics ARE. Typically, the basics are the ‘secrets’ they’ve shown up to learn.
Just a hint for ya- the biggest, baddest, meaning thing to learn about cartooning? You create them in reverse order than you read them. No kidding.
The average student (not just kids, but adults too) will do this weird default thing when you ask them to doodle up a cartoon. They draw a box, draw a character in it, then go “Hmmmmm” while they try to figure out what the character will say. Once that panel’s done, they’ll start on the next panel. I guess they assume (I started to say “I guess they think…” but there’s not much thinking going into it yet) that they’ll draw a third and fourth panel like this and somehow a gag will happen by the fourth panel (or by the last page, if they’re comic book enthusiasts)
But starting at the first panel and advancing along with no idea what’s coming next is how you READ a comic strip. Why it’s also how we instinctively try to create one is anyone’s guess.
To create a comic strip (or comic book) you have to know what the theme, the idea, and the script are FIRST. Then you can decide how many panels (or pages) your comic has to be, and you can lay out all the panels or pages, letter it all, then draw the balloons, bubbles and boxes, then draw the characters and backgrounds. See? Backward to the way you’d assume it should be.
I love teaching those classes and seeing the light come on in one or two students’ eyes. You know they’ve taken another step along a path toward being a cartoonist, one of the ones that’ll never say “Oh, yeah, I used to draw pretty good when I was a kid…” but will continue to draw and doodle and entertain themselves and others for their whole lives.
Just hope that Bob remembers to stay out of Lowell’s fall-zone or he’s gonna be Squish-Bob….
Comment on the comic comment: People usually think in pieces. An opening scene, a punch line, a fight scene, the trick move in the middle. They have trouble working with more than one piece at a time, and this means that there’s no over-arching connecting theme between the pieces. That’s why we’re always being told to look at “the big picture”. And why, after talking for two hours, we’ll finally get to, “I guess what I’m trying to say is…” Few people have practice developing the “big picture”, and we’re not taught how to develop unified themes in school. It’s all disconnected piecework. Additionally, people don’t like being told that they don’t know the basics, they want to believe they’re more advanced than that. So, when I become King of Everything, my first official act will be to change the word “basics” to “ollie”.
When you become sovereign of Hong Kong, let me know.
Just… just because.
I’ve taught my 60+ year old aunt, and my 70+ year old mentor how to use Android.
I’ve tried to teach people simple computer skills, but, the industry joke is pretty much true: “90% of computer errors happen between the keyboard and the chair.”
One place I worked in mid-late 80’s, I actually WROTE a data logger/search batch piece of software for tracking and handling some of what we handled every day. I would do laminated ‘step by step’ sheets for people to refer to to use it. The one that kept me hopping was that you had to log out properly or else; and nobody could understand ‘type ‘Exit’ hit [ENTER] then turn off system’. They would type Exit, then turn it off. Then I would have to deal with a mess. EVERY DAY. I even drew a cartoonish panel showing the person looking at screen. Typing Exit. Reaching for and pushing the ENTER button, then turning off the system. Nope, they still couldn’t do it.
No incentive that’s why. Cost you a dollar if you fail just once during a day, earn a dollar if you get a perfect score that day. Carrot and a stick.
The problem was that didn’t associate the mistake with the action they had made. If the system had made a nasty sound or some recognisable thing when they turned it off, it would have been recognisable to them, but they only knew that there was a problem when they turned it back on… some time later. Humans learn from fast action/result speeds: Usually it has to be under five seconds, or we have difficulty associating the result with the action we made. We’re weird that way.
Allan C-B…that is so true! Our little joke is that we blame “the loose screw behind the keyboard.”
And uses the “coaster” improperly.
Ah yes … the “coaster”.
I’ve seen it used that way. People don’t read (almost all the drives say “CDROM” or “DVDRW” etc.)
leave it to bob,while paste winds up banging his head over lowels stupidity to in his own way set up lowel for more fun and humilation, hope he is out of the way once lowel crashes or bob will have to be shoveled off the payment.
Noobs don’t want to be noobs. That’s the way it is for most.